Did the Chinese Overreact?

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you were black, and waiting on me in a restaurant, and I yelled across the place at you "Boy, fetch me another lemonade!" would you possibly get a bit "uppity?"

Like I said, if small breast and genitals were something that Japanese believed about Chinese, perhaps there would be something. But nothing like that exists.

It'd be akin to white schoolkids today prancing around in their underwear at a show attended by mostly black people. It may be a bit inappropriate, yes, but no one in their right minds would say the kids did this to insult blacks!

[David Floyd]

If you were black, and waiting on me in a restaurant, and I yelled across the place at you "Boy, fetch me another lemonade!" would you possibly get a bit "uppity?"

Possibly, but the Japanese pranks were not racial slurs.

And I find it interesting that Imran and I actually agree on something

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well it is UR on the other side

[MichaeltheGreat]

If you look at the whole modern history, it goes beyond mass butchery like Nanjing, beheading contests, gang rape sports until the victims literally died of internal hemorhaging, live dissections, live prisoners used at random for bayonet and sword practice, and a host of other things. You also have a mass of propaganda caricaturing the lowly, greasy, stupid, ignorant Chinese and the glorious Japanese, portrayals of every sort of stereotype and mockery of the Chinese individually, as a people, nationally, culturally. And this legacy of mockery and degradation occurred as the background to slavery, torture and genocide of unimagineable proportions.

The holocaust really pales in comparison, but the reason it's more prominent is that it lethally affected so much larger a percentage of the Jewish population of Europe. The Japanese simply couldn't butcher that many Chinese in the time they had, not for lack of trying - plus they also made it recreation, as opposed to an industrially effiecient process.

Add to that the complete denial, lack of apology or accounting because China went commie and we felt it convenient to look the other way at Japanese war crimes for the sake of the cold war - and the Japanese, individually and nationally got away with a hell of a lot vis-a-vis their treatment of the peoples they conquered. We not only had a lot less of Japanese "hospitality" with Pearl, the Bataan Death March, the mass murder of civilian construction personnel on Wake Island, POW executions at Makin Island, that did the Chinese, we had the catharsis of beating them ****ing senseless from Edson's Ridge right up to Nagasaki. We don't need no apologies, we got what we needed when we left an Ace of Spades on their dead asses.

The Chinese got dealt so many orders of magnitude worse that there isn't even a scale for it, and most of those atrocities and crimes were never answered for. Hell, you've got apologists, minimizers and deniers of Japanese warcrimes sitting in their government now, including at the national legislative level. In Japanese schoolbooks on modern Japanese history, those things essentially never happened. If you want to make an Israeli-German analogy, then you have to think in terms of a Germany where holocaust denial is de facto policy, and where neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers are active members of the government.

So we're not really in a position to judge their level of sensitivity about any sort of perceived insult. If the Chinese go ballistic, they have a lot of reason for it. As far as them being the ones to let it go - that's BS until the Japanese "let it go" by dropping the rationalizations, denials and evasion of the truth.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by David Floyd


Possibly, but the Japanese pranks were not racial slurs.

And I find it interesting that Imran and I actually agree on something

"Boy" is not a racial slur, nor is "fetch me another lemonade" - they may be insulting and degrading, but mostly as a result of a particular historical context.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So we're not really in a position to judge their level of sensitivity about any sort of perceived insult.

Why not, it's a free country (well here anyway) .

I think we can judge that their sensitivity to something which can only be construed as an 'insult' by those looking to find one is utterly silly.

I think that statement is as ridiculous as saying whites are not in any position to judge the sensitivity of blacks in America about any sort of percieved insult. If its dumb, it's dumb. Maybe you need an outsider looking in to show the reasonable way to look at the situation, but that doesn't mean that the outsider can't say how dumb it is.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

So we're not really in a position to judge their level of sensitivity about any sort of perceived insult.

Why not, it's a free country (well here anyway) .

Let me rephrase then. We are always "free" to form uninformed, unqualified opinions.

I think we can judge that their sensitivity to something which can only be construed as an 'insult' by those looking to find one is utterly silly.

If you have an unresolved issue and a history of "**** you" attitudes by the past violator, then it's not too surprising that their current conduct is viewed in a somewhat jaded and unforgiving manner.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you have an unresolved issue and a history of "**** you" attitudes by the past violator, then it's not too surprising that their current conduct is viewed in a somewhat jaded and unforgiving manner.

Understanding a reaction and calling it moronic anyway are two different things .

[Drake Tungsten]

Did the Chinese Overreact?

Of course they did; do the Chinese ever not overreact when Japan is involved? It's frightening that this type of stuff actually happens. You'd think something this idiotic could only come from the pages of the Onion.

[Dis]

I think it is obvious that Japanese people have no sense of humour. Of course, neither do the Chinese.

Scary. Why do I think China will attempt to conquer Japan now?

[Mr. Harley]

To add on to what MichaeltheGreat stated. It's a bigger problem when both governments teach a very slanted and propogandized history to their children. Please understand, the US could do better - who here knows what the Salt River Massacre was, or the biggest mass hanging in the history of the United States (hint, during the civil war) - but compared to what has happened in Japan and China we are a bright and shining star when it comes to teaching our children history.

The Chinese are hypersensitive collectively, and often individually, about any cultural insensitivity by any Japanese, and see it as an "ugly" Japanese, aka the "ugly American". Considering the unresolved history and government meddling gives it context. It's sad, but very human. South Korea seems to have worked through the issue of Japan's brutul occupation, maybe they would have some tips for China and Japan?

[Drake Tungsten]

South Korea seems to have worked through the issue of Japan's brutul occupation, maybe they would have some tips for China and Japan?

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I think South Korea still has a long way to go before they have fully worked through that particular issue.

[Mr. Harley]

That's true, but it seems they are not quite as hyper-sensitive as the Chinese. Of course, I'll be honest, I don't follow the news out of South Korea too closely.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Looking at this thread, I'm tempted to start a "Did Apolyton Off Topic overreact?" thread.

The only problem is that it would be impossible to fit in a "banana" option.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
No, Chinese hate Japanese with a passion. If the movie were American, nothing would have happened.

True. One day a student in my class said that he "hated" the Japanese. I asked him why. He replied that he "didn't know." A lot of Chinese (especially young people) are like this. They become "programmed" with information and don't question it very closely. It becomes something that "everybody knows" (e.g. "everybody knows" that Thai food is too spicy to eat, even though no one knows anyone who ever actually tried it.)

The days that Chinese were puritanical are long over.

Agreed. Chinese movies don't tell the real story (they must pass governement muster). In real life you see young couples everywhere making out in public (they have no place to do it in private). Sometimes I think I see more public hanky-panky in Shanghai than I ever did in an American city. It's rather surprising.